


Gremlin Children vs that Snake-bastard’s demon hickey

by KrakenMo (goldenKnife)



Series: Gremlin Children of Konoha [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Anko is somehow the calm one, Gen, Hints of mild AU will be scattered like birdseed at a wedding, Stations of the Canon assumed to have been visited up until The Forest of Death, Team Bonding, Team seven are gremlin children, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, cursed seal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24298381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenKnife/pseuds/KrakenMo
Summary: Sasuke has no patience left for strange snake people distributing non-consensual curse marks in the forest, Sakura is picking up on clues she willfully ignored before, and Naruto is just happy to sabotage any attempts to escape the group puppy piles.  Perhaps grabbing the entire buffet's worth of sugar was a mistake?  Kakashi is glad the team has finally come together with a single purpose, even if that purpose is making him twitch.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto
Series: Gremlin Children of Konoha [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1845049
Comments: 11
Kudos: 230
Collections: Exchange no Jutsu 2020





	Gremlin Children vs that Snake-bastard’s demon hickey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catsinouterspace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsinouterspace/gifts).



  
Kakashi isn’t surprised when Sasuke abandons the excitable rookie reunion in the cafeteria of the forest tower, but the beeline he makes for Kakashi’s hiding place is a bit disconcerting. “You know Seals, right? Orochimaru messed with Naruto’s seal and I need you to fix it so I can fix _this_.” 

_Orochimaru did what?!_ Kakashi stares at the black tomoe marks revealed when Sasuke pulls his top to the side slightly- a cursed seal. He shoves the impulse to murder back down into the dark hole where it normally lives, the better to fester until the Snake Sannin is in front of him. His grumpiest student’s confidence in him is touching, but the village expert on curse seals is already in the tower and not getting her input would be criminally stupid. “Get your teammates and meet me upstairs,” Kakashi orders, and for once is met with only a sassy salute instead an argument. 

Anko tries to bite him when he tells her about Orochimaru, “And you left them alone?”

“To gather reinforcements,” Kakashi cuts off any more accusations- he explains that they need help with containing the seal and she agrees more or less instantly. 

They find said trio in one of the smaller rooms upstairs, Naruto and Sakura clearing the center of the floor of all obstructions while Sasuke sets out an unfamiliar brush and ink set. 

“I still think it’s creepy that you bullied that masked guy into giving you that,” Naruto says as they enter.

“He owes me a lot of favors,” Sasuke snorts, “And now he owes me one less.”

“Sensei, tell him to stop being such a mob-boss!” Naruto complains.

“Maa Naruto, why would I do that?” Kakashi flips his book closed and eyes his genin more closely. His first impression of exhaustion isn’t far off, but the details of Sakura’s hair, Naruto’s lingering injuries, and the flickering, rancid taint to Sasuke’s chakra are much more obvious in the less crowded room. The food has helped perk them up, but they're still running mostly on adrenaline and spite.

Sakura squints between them, “Sasuke-kun, are you blackmailing Sensei?”

“If I was I’d demand more punctuality,” his little would-be mob boss mutters. 

Anko starts laughing at them, not even bothering to cover her mouth as she cackles. 

Naruto points an accusing finger at his teammate, “You are a mob boss! Sensei showed up less than ten minutes after we did.” he crosses the distance between them in a blink, grabbing at Sasuke’s collar and shaking it, “How’d you do it, bastard? Did you take one of his dogs hostage? Oh no, was it Mr. Ukki?”

“Like I’m going to tell you what I have on Kakashi; you’d shout it from the Hokage mountain and then it wouldn’t be useful as blackmail anymore.”

Anko bumps into Kakashi’s side, “What vicious little monsters.” She sounds unfairly delighted. Of course, they aren’t her problem on the daily. 

“My cute little genin, we’re doing Fuuin today. Sakura, please explain to your gremlin teammates what Fuuinjutsu is and what it is used for,” Kakashi takes possession of the ink and brush set while his smartest student launches into a textbook perfect definition. For a change Naruto doesn’t have any questions and it’s Sasuke who challenges the narrow parameters of what Formalist Fuuinjutsu contains compared to the broader applications of Formula Script. Kakashi leaves them to it, writing out a small array that should let him diagnose what’s been done to Naruto’s chakra without interfering with his seal. 

Of course Orochimaru was not so circumspect as to leave the seal alone- the mismatched seal laid over the fox’s and over Naruto’s own sea of chakra would make channeling chakra like pulling it through a shifting maze, losing both mass and control at every corner. 

“Can you fix it?” Naruto asks in a whisper, proving that he does have volume control and leaving Kakashi wondering what kind of blackmail he’ll need to get him to use it in circumstances not related to the fox. 

Kakashi nods, taking up the brush again. He’s not as good as his sensei or any of the Sannin, he can’t create complex seals and apply them with a touch, but he knows how to get rid of what the Snake has done to Naruto, even if he can’t do the same for Sasuke. 

Naruto accepts this with a grim smile, his fingers holding onto the hem of his shirt in anticipation. 

Kakashi and Naruto rejoin the other conversation in time to hear Sasuke say, “-because despite your narrow-minded definition of Fuuinjutsu, I trust you not to mess this up. What does being a girl have to do with it?” 

Sakura’s incoherent shriek and attempted murder by head-pulverizing punch launches the pair into a chase around the room to bleed-off nervous energy. Naruto joins in on principle and to burn off the excess chakra released along with the bad seal. 

Kakashi raises his one visible eyebrow at Anko. She looks disturbed and intrigued- never a good combination. 

“The little mob boss says he’s been using the anti-pregnancy jutsu to keep the curse-mark from getting comfortable,” Anko reports, her own incredulity plain from the twitch of her left eye muscle but not in her voice, “but he doesn’t have enough chakra to force it out on his own. So he wants to borrow some of your other brat’s chakra. The rest of us are supposed to make sure that nothing goes wrong when ‘the Sunshine and his pet fox burn out the Snake’s nasty’ and Pinkie didn’t mind any of that. No, apparently the sticking point is Mob Boss knows a girl coded thing that Pinkie doesn’t.” 

Kakashi winces at the comparison, but if you saw the Curse Mark as a foreign chakra entity invading and attempting to form a parasitic bond with your own... the metaphor wasn't even a metaphor. He’s not surprised it occurred to Sasuke, though the solution is novel. If it works. 

Anko no doubt has similar thoughts, from the way she taps at her own sealed off Mark. But she has another more pressing question, “Do they really not know about each other?”

Kakashi sighs, “I was hoping the exams would be a good bonding experience and they might figure it out?”

“Figure out what, Sensei?” 

Kakashi smiles at Naruto despite the damage to his eardrums, “Maybe you can figure it out and help them.”

His other two gremlins pause their squabbling at this broad invitation to meddling and confer in actual whispers. Oh how their teamwork has grown from such terrible beginnings. Like Naruto’s sense of danger, from oblivious to anyone not hollering for his blood to able to sense his teammates curious malice turning upon him. Kakashi let them continue their rolling chase around the room for another minute before calling them to something like order. 

Assembled in a pile before him, they look even more like puppies than usual. Still, the situation is serious. “Sasuke, Anko tells me you have a plan?”

“Oh, right,” the last scion of the Uchiha wriggles out from under Naruto and sits up. “Naruto, I need to borrow a lot of chakra to get rid of the snake-bastard’s demon hickey.”

“Oh! Why didn’t you say so?” Naruto perks up.

“I did, moron. Glad you can understand the simplified version.”

“Trade you a lot of chakra for a lot of ramen, jerk.” 

“Deal,” Sasuke huffs and withdraws his arms into his shirt, tugging and undoing several vital knots before pulling one of his undershirts off and out through his left sleeve. 

“What are you DOING?” Sakura half shrieks again, scandalized.

“It’s better not to have extra seals interfering with techniques like this,” Sasuke rolls his eyes, tossing the undershirt onto Sakura’s face, exposing the formula script stitched discreetly into the inside. 

Kakashi can see the thoughts connecting in Sakura’s mind as she looks at the shirt, then at Sasuke’s subtly altered shape. At not-quite thirteen, there isn’t that much curve to flatten, but Sakura was a dedicated stalker with an excellent memory for detail. 

“You!” she pops onto her knees and lunges forward, “How long have you known?”

“About me? Since I was four,” he tries to dodge sideways to avoid her, but Naruto blocks his escape like the opportunistic saboteur he is. Sasuke continues over Sakura’s whine of despair as they end up in another pile of limbs on the floor, “About you? I guessed something was up a few minutes ago, but you just confirmed it.”

“And your parents just... accepted you.” 

Sasuke lifts the arm not trapped between himself and Naruto to pat Sakura’s head. “Yeah, Uchiha traditions about gender roles are weird compared to Fire-country standards, so it wasn’t a big deal in-clan. They set me up with Inoichi in case other people didn’t get it, but if you want comfort maybe talk to him ‘cause that’s not my forte.” The understatement goes unchallenged. 

Sakura accepts the head pats with far more grace than Kakashi has ever received for the same gesture, but he’s never dropped such a large bomb on his students, either. She has her thinking face on now, and will reorganize observations from the past few years in light of this new information in a minute or two, then have a new plan shortly after, he’s sure. 

Naruto just bumps his head against his teammates in a bid for attention, “Ne, ne, I don’t like gender roles either!”

Sasuke extracts his other arm and pats Naruto’s hair without comment. 

“Let’s fix Sasuke up and then we’ll talk about it,” Sakura suggests, turning a hungry look on her teammates that has nothing to do with her professed crush. No, Kakashi sees a deep dive into Uchiha clan traditions, visits to Inoichi, and a clan-adoption or two in the not-too-distant future. _Finally._

“Yeah bastard, what do we need to do?”

His little mob boss smiles for once and tells them. 

**Author's Note:**

> And here we stop, at a point of divergence you can't handwave. 
> 
> I actually intended this to be a hurt/comfort plot but the gremlin children don't want that, they want to run around like sugar-high puppies.


End file.
